On Being A Member of the Adams Family

 https://youtu.be/AK1hX_j0-E4?si=qHY4PJf_WWdL_bGH

Which, I happen to be... 

<ahem>

:-)

Mid-Week Update

 Not a normal time for me to post, but this All Hallow's Eve finds me in Jericho, Vermont playing 1800mm Modern wargaming. (for thems not in the know, that means it's time to play part-time Army)

I seem to have an issue with remembering passwords, so I've locked myself out of my grad school's account. <Ahem> My love of technology is just blooming right now... 

But fortunately, I have many things to read, whilst I work on an essay for one of my classes. These are recent purchases that have been added to the Ducal Library under the pretense of "but my darling, I NEED these for school.." 

I'm pretty sure she's on to me about that. But more of that anon. 

I'm pretty well tucked into the one on the left and I've skimmed through Philbrick's "In The Heart Of The Sea" for elements of my essay. Both are excellent. Looking forward to getting into the other two. 

And, speaking of blooming, my darling bride celebrated her 60th trip around Sol Prime on Tuesday. We celebrated with Herself and Herself the Younger carving pumpkins, baked salmon for supper, and (after my hour and a half class on the Spanish West Indies) watching Ancient Aliens. 

A flower cake sent by her sister Renee and brother in law Greg

I have had the great joy to have her in my life for 33 years now, 31 of which I have been able to call her my wife and partner in my life. She is an amazing woman. Happy Birthday, my darling! 

Weekend Update

 A busy week at work and in my graduate program found me facing multiple choices for what to do for the "48 Hour Pass" of the weekend. 

For better or worse, I decided to run down to the Del-Val Gamers games day in Springfield for a morning game, then head up the Turnpike Extension to the wilds of Luzerne County for a game with the PAWM crew in the evening. 

Two games, two different clubs, one day. 

Cliff B. running a Frostgrave game. 

Tripods and Martians on another table

And something more up my alley....Pete B. (left) running a 15mm Marlburian game

And so, I joined the French army and took the left wing under Villars, while my good friend Bobby V. took the right wing. Lee and Mike were our opponents with the Allied Army. 

Pete runs "Volley and Bayonet" games, with a stand equaling a regiment of horse or foot and a gun representing several guns. Big Hand, Small Map, as one of my Command and General Staff College instructors would have called it. Love it. 

My left wing of cavalry managed a very respectable grinding draw against several regiments of good quality Dutch and Austrian cavalry. My second line of infantry made sure that they stayed firmly in place and did not trip over their shoes, nor hurt themselves with any scissors or any other pointy objects. Likewise, my artillery did very minimal damage to anyone, but they were obliged to dirty the barrels of their guns by occasionally launching the odd cannonball in the general direction of the enemy, chiefly some irritatingly efficient Danes, who kept trying to provoke my men. Cheesy buggers!

And then there was my first line of infantry, who actually did manage to get into close range. They managed to savage a couple of Lee's regiments, but eventually two of my regiments were badly handled by both musketry and cannons. 

At the end, we held one objective, one was unoccupied, and the third was held by those dastardly Danes. Bobby had more of a time on the right. He was roundly spanked by Mike's cavalry, but his Bavarians died gloriously to a man fighting the Red Menace of the Hanoverians and English. 

Pete called it a draw after seven turns. A great and fun time. 

I then went home for a quick lunch and nap, then drove up to Mike S.'s place in Kingston for Round 2

Jim B., gazing over the battlefield wondering what evil Mike S. has in store for us.

The PAWM crew loves simple rules and evil GMs. Well, we had both, along with a maddening scenario to boot Saturday night. 

Mark C. uses a simplified version of Neil Thomas' Ancient and Medieval Rules for a bash up between Vikings and Angles and Saxons. Where the Jutes got off to, no one was sure, but we're pretty sure it wasn't to help the Vikes. 

The Northumbrian Vikings RFC was represented by myself, Jim B., and Aethelred the OFM, aka John. 

The dastardly Angles, Saxons and (sometimes) Jutes, were played by Mark C. and Darrell S., fresh off IL status. 

"Odin loves all His Vikings!

All the little Vikings in the world

Be you Norse, or Swede or Dane

Odin loves you all the same

Odin loves all the Vikings in the world..."

(with apologies to the Irish Christian Brothers...) 

Well, Odin may love his Vikings, but sure the Dice Gods didn't give a split skull for us. More of that anon. Our scenario was to go across the table and kill people and break things. Oh, and loot the church. 

BUT....Evil GM Mike decided that we wouldn't know what our terrain would be until after we set up our troops... and you can probably guess about how well that went. <sigh>

Oh well, we're Vikings. We have big axes and nothing else to do on a Saturday night... 

Evil Mike sets out terrain as Darrell looks on and realizes it's pretty good to be an Angle or a Saxon and maybe even a Jute...but NOT a Viking.

Mark saying how good it is to have an "Angle" on dem Vikings... like maybe a warband, some archers (who kept shooting me in the ASS!) and some crappy, but rather annoying, javelin tossing light cavalry.

And three hours later...you can see the results of my lousy dice rolling and Jim's lousy dice rolling and John's lousy dice rolling... 

About the only thing that didn't happen was we didn't shoot Aethelred the OFM in the back with a javelin or hit him on the head with an axe, mostly because we couldn't hit the Other Guys, it was pretty much assured we couldn't manage to assassinate John. 

That being said, it was game with Vikings, meatball subs for supper, and a lot of good conversation. Defintiely worth the drive. Got me thinking about making up a couple of Greek armies for these rules with plastic figures from Victrix. Mike's Vikes are from Victrix and I was suitably impressed. 

But not Mike's cat Carson. Carson was not impressed with the Pink Hairless Monkeys playing on his tabletop and not sharing the little cubes. He did allow us to pet him, though. Just a bit... 

And Time Marches On...

 Nothing much going on here in the Duchy. Work and Graduate school have kept me from getting anything done on the painting table, the game table (with a lovely ACW Portable Wargame set up ready to go..), or on the blog. 

Herself and I have managed a few moments together, though, just to remember who that other person in the house is...

An early Saturday morning breakfast of "Norwegian Pancakes". I made the batter a little thinner and we have some brown Norwegian cheese we found at a specialty cheese shop with strawberry jam from Aldi.

The first use of our second-hand fire pit since we were gifted it.....ummmm...a couple of years ago? Tells you how exciting things get around the Duchy in the autumn. 

This past weekend found me at a Civil War event in Mullica Hill, NJ. My unit normally portrays Company C, 28th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. But we also have a segment that dresses as Knap's Independent Battery, which was formed out of the 28th PVI early in the war. 

Mullica Hill is a low-key, fun little dog and pony show. Kind of goofy, kind of fun. A day trip event this year as most of the unit will be at Cedar Creek this coming weekend. Sadly, work and school prevent me from going. 

Nothing, absolutely nothing, beats campfire coffee...

Hopefully, this weekend, I'll trek up to Kingston, PA for another game with the PAWM crew. The Del-Val Gamers (our club of clubs) has their Game Day this weekend, but I would need to be very lucky to push lead and roll dice in two clubs in two locations in the same day. 

More anon, but for right now, back to my research paper proposal. 

"Break Over!", as we say in the warehouse.

Not Quite a Victory in a Not Quite the Seven Years War Game

Saturday found me in Harve de Grace, Maryland at the HAWKS Club regional convention, BARRAGE.

 Notwithstanding the fact 2024 is the 30th Anniversary of the HAWKS, the two-day show was well attended, including the dealers' area and flea market tables that line the walls around the game tables.

But more of that anon. 

I essentially went down for just some of Saturday's fun, mostly to see folks and for the low stress flea market. 

I did choose to play in one game, though, a HAWKS standard. It's a group project they've run for, well, decades, at this point, their Not Quite The Seven Year War wargame. 

40mm semi-round 18th century figures, painted in the colours of imagi-nation regiments, using "Charge" rules and D6's. 

Did I mention the massive size of the units? 

Big regiments. As in 60 figure infantry regiments...yeah. BIG regiments on magnetic movement trays. 

One of the units I had the fortune to command, was a regiment of Rossmark Pandours, painted by my friend in Nova Scotia, Ross Macfarlane. I asked Rob Dean, who was running the game, if there were any units painted by Ross on the table, that would be available for me to command. 

The 32nd North Polenberg Dragoon Regiment

So I had not one, but two, of these massive cavalry regiments. Needless to say, I did not have to hit the gym Saturday, I got plenty of weightlifting moving big trays of 40mm figures...

"I wanna be in the cavalry, if they send me off to war"

The scenario itself wasn't very complicated, three objectives for my side to take, being defended, of course, by all HAWKS Club members, who knew the rules, etc, etc, etc... Hmmm.... 

That being said, it was nice to hold the right flank of my team. I had a small redoubt opposite me, run by Roger C., whom I know from OttoCon times. My Pandours on the right and the giant hundredweight of cavalry on my left, I surged forward....via written orders, of course. It IS "Charge" after all... 

And fractions. Many, many fractions. 

Truth be told, the rules...um...kind of suck. But when you are pushing big regiments of shiny toy soldiers with like minded enthusiasts, it's not so bad...

Cocked hats and crooked dice, indeed...

I'm sure there's some Victorian-esque wargame doggerel out there to scribble, but I just don't have the mental bandwidth right now. 

How can you not love something like this? 

Anyway, the game was scheduled for 16 turns, and we actually slogged through 10 before we called it at Turn 11. We took one objective, had a decent shot at taking another, if we had more time, and no chance to get the third. I think Rob called it a "draw"...but the post-game recrimination and mud flinging phase was interrupted by Anniversary Cake being served.

As always, the HAWKS put on a great show. The game was enormous fun, and very gentlemanly, too. Proper 18th century play and behaviour. Well, except for maybe the odd taunt... 😏

Already looking forward to next year. 

More about this year's BARRAGE, later. 

Test Drive of The Portable Wargame

 A recent purchase on Wargames Vault of the Second Portable Wargame Compendium and the recent gift of a coupon for the Third Compendium, led me to have a think on using the TPW with my Civil War collection. 

I've got four sheets of foamcore that I used for Ross Macfarlane's excellent Square Brigadier rules. So I decided I'd get something simple out of the One Hour Wargame book of scenarios and have an ACW action to test the rules.

An unnamed farm at an unnamed crossroads in the rolling country of Pennsyltucky

A poor shot of the Union cavalry brigade, four units with a battery (I need to find my limbers..) and a general

And the opposing Confederate cavalry brigade, who seem to have found their limber for the battery

The scenario will be a flanking column of cavalry must capture an important crossroads near a farm and hold it to prevent the enemy from using it as an avenue of approach. Simple. Five units and a general each. 

Even though I set this up last night, I was too tired to play it out. I've class tonight after work, so assuming I'm not completely exhausted, I'll try to get my initial Orders and layout done, then play it over the rest of the week. 

Reports, via telegraph, will be shared as they come...

Meanwhile....Back to Toy Soldiers

 Last weekend I headed up the NE Turnpike Extension to Kingston, PA for a game with the PAWM crew. 

The game on our bi-weekly menu was a semi-fictional bash between Turks and Russians set in 1750-something. Probably in South Central Kerplachistan. Or not. 

The battle lines are formed. 

The rules were Age of Reason, the figures were provided by Darrell S., who also ran the game, and our host was Mike S. 

For the Turks, it was our glorious host, Omar Bin Mike, myself, and John El OFM, as the Grand Visine.

Our Dastardly Russian opponents were Three Guys Named Ivan (Mark C., JIM B., and Jim) and Roger.

Those Dastardly Russians...minus Roger, hiding off camera

I held the Turkish left flank with my Ortas of the Benandjerries and the Peanutbutterjellies, with some rather questionable gents with bows and more with pointy sticks and swords. I had a similar brigade to my right. Pretty, pretty figures, but nothing I'd want to storm the proverbial castle with. 

The game was one of those "line up and bash about" types, which sometimes is just the mental floss you need after a week at work. 

Our Dastardly Russian foes slowly beat our gallant Turkish hordes and then finally ground us down in several turns of gritty, chart-busting die rolls. (hint: I'm not a fan of AOR, but that's just me)

John El OFM's Big Whomping Gun gets whomped itself, by Cossacks (BOO! HISS!)

Just when you think your Janissaries are doing what they...Orta be doing... 

They fall apart...with the Russians arguing about how good it is to be Russian... 

All in all, a fun game. I like the Seven Years War. But I'd rather play Honours of War or Post of Honour. Too much chart busting with Age of Reason for me. But fortunately, Darrell knows the rules and we have a good group.